


Forgot to Mention One Little Thing

by apanoplyofsong



Series: let your heart be light [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas, Dogs, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 12:49:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5375774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apanoplyofsong/pseuds/apanoplyofsong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy had a plan, but, well. The dog has other ideas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forgot to Mention One Little Thing

**Author's Note:**

> HERE, TIERNEY; IT'S WHAT YOU ALWAYS EXPECTED FROM ME.
> 
> This is just full-fledged cheesy, I have no excuses. Title from "Santa, Baby."

Clarke loves having a dog. Really, she does. Her parents adopted a border collie before she was born and most of her memories before the age of 8 are of running around the back yard, Heidi yapping at her feet. When Heidi died around the same time as Clarke's mother got promoted to Chief of Staff at the hospital, shortly before Clarke's dad got sick, her parents said they just didn't have the time commitment to get another dog. Which was fair. Clarke wants dogs to go to homes that can love them as well as possible. 

But during the years she had been relegated to fish ownership, she had still missed having a dog around, the vibrant sense something so alive. So when she and Bellamy had been living together for two years and dating for three, both had stable jobs, and were moving into a townhouse with a yard, she took that as her sign. 

Two weekends after moving in, they were at a local pet adoption event and found Pongo, a mid-sized mutt whose mottled white fur only vaguely resembles his namesake. The pup had perked his ears up as Clarke and Bellamy walked by, trotting forward with a wagging tail from where he had been hiding in the back of his pen. She was sold instantly. 

Bellamy had tried to change his name for the first couple of weeks they had him, heavily pushing for Romulus (despite the dog resembling a wolf even less than a dalmatian) but Pongo was too stubborn to respond to anything else and in the end, Bellamy relented. Clarke knew Octavia had watched _101 Dalmatians_ religiously between the ages of 3 and 5, when she didn't understand why she and Bellamy couldn't have a dog in their apartment, so she's pretty sure Bellamy's whole heart wasn't in the task anyway. 

Especially since, when they found a small female terrier-mix in need of rescuing 3 months ago, a year after getting Pongo, it was Bellamy who suggested they name her Perdita. 

So, Clarke loves having the dogs. But regardless of how much it makes her heart swell to be greeted with three smiling faces and two wagging tails every time she comes home, they could still be jackasses. 

Despite the living room floor being scattered with rubbery toys and stuffed animals that squeak when Bellamy inevitably trips over them in the middle of the night, Pongo and Perdita tend to enjoy chewing on exactly what they shouldn’t. It’s mostly unintentional, she knows logically. But after the fourth pair of underwear had been gnawed through and Bellamy had lost so many socks he took to keeping an unopened pack on the top shelf of the closet at all times, she stopped being understanding and moved onto annoyance. Mixed in with begrudging adoration because, well, their stupid floppy ears are still cute when they’re being dicks. Even if they had eaten all her flip-flops.

“Oh, fucking hell, what do you have now?”

Clarke plops down on the tile floor next to Pongo, letting herself glare at the dog for a moment. She’s tired—working as the education outreach coordinator for a local biochemistry lab gets hectic this time of year with schools looking for ways to keep kids occupied in the final weeks of the semester—and all she really wanted to do was come home, have sex with her ridiculously attractive boyfriend, and eat Twizzlers while watching cheesy Hallmark Christmas movies on TV.

She didn’t want to deal with Pongo pulling yet another ornament off the tree or somehow attacking the candy dish she swears was set several feet back on the counter. He and Perdita are probably colluding. It would make sense, that they were using their powers for evil specifically designed to manifest at the most inconvenient moments. She’s not underestimating them.

Clarke hears the back door close and tiny feet pattering across the floor, Perdita’s little brown eyes peering around the corner to the entryway.

“Bellamy, this butthead of a dog is at it again!” She feels bad calling the dogs anything too harsh, which mostly mean she resorts to third grade insults when complaining.

“Oh yeah? What does he have now?” Bellamy calls back, disembodied voice floating from the direction of the living room.

Clarke leans forward and pulls Pongo back between her legs, the dog hanging onto the object trapped between his paws and mouth determinedly.

“Come on boy, let me see.” Pongo doesn’t listen, chewing away so that his latest victim gives a muted ‘pop.’ She has to forcibly pry his jaw open to extract the item, moving her hand away quickly before his teeth snap closed. Pongo gives a soft whine, thumping his tail once against the floor before going over to smell Perdita for whatever she may have rolled around in in the back yard.

Clarke takes a moment to inspect what’s in her hand. It’s not anything she recognizes—a small square box that fits in the palm of her hand, its faux leather finish imprinted with teeth marks and slick with slobber. She tries to run through the Christmas gifts she hasn’t wrapped yet, wondering if the dogs somehow got into her closet again, but comes up blank.

“Huh. Do you know what this is?”

Feet move towards her, Bellamy’s bare soles sticking slightly to the old wood floor as they stop outside the entryway. She turns the object over in her hand again. One of the hinges has been popped, but otherwise it appears predominantly undamaged. Curious, she flips the lid back, and immediately looks up at Bellamy.

He’s leaning against the wall, hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans as he looks down at her, soft and amused. It’s the same way he looked at her on their second date, Raven having finally convinced them to “ _get their shit together, for fuck’s sake_ ” after a year of dancing around each other in grad school. Clarke had been ranting about the gender inequality in “Guess Who?” and when she’d paused to look at him, Bellamy had been staring back at her, this look on his face that made her breath catch and her chest warm, something quiet and good settling into her heart.

It gives her the same feeling now.

“I, uh, was planning to wait until after the holidays to avoid the clichés, but apparently the dog decided against that.” He licks his lips, grinning a little crooked and hopeful, and she looks back down at her hand.

The box holds a ring, two small diamonds nestled on either side of an emerald, glinting back at her from the holder’s shiny satin. She traces her finger over the central stone, reverent.

“Is this…?”

Bellamy nods. “Yeah. It’s the emerald from your dad’s necklace. I had the jewelers save the setting for that, just in case, but…I thought you might like to have it there.”

“I do,” she whispers, eyes still fixed on the ring in her hand. On the last Christmas he was alive, her father had given her a necklace with a simple pendant, emerald for their shared birthstone, and told her it would keep him close after he was gone.

She looks up, and Bellamy is still watching her, steady and understanding, a small smile resting around his eyes.

Clarke adores that man.

“So,” he says, “now that my plan is shot…what do you say? You wanna marry me?”

She laughs, a little watery but as bright and full as every part of her feels, and pushes herself up from the floor to press her face against Bellamy’s chest. She can see the lights glittering on the tree behind him, can smell the spice of his cologne, can feel Perdita and Pongo sniffing at her socks. She can pinpoint all the things about this moment that make her feel so at home.

“Yeah.” She tilts her head up, presses a kiss against his lips that makes her warm down to her toes. “Yeah, I really do.”

There’s no mistletoe, but they celebrate anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're unfamiliar with Guess Who?, see [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guess_Who%3F)\--it truly did always have a terrible gender disparity. All ridiculous exploits courtesy of my own dog. I'm currently working on one more Christmastime fic, have a playlist for these idiots queued to post, and am most of the way through a Jessica Jones AU, so I fully expect to be jinxed anytime now.
> 
> As always, I'm on tumblr with fic-related things [here](http://apanoplyoffic.tumblr.com/) and more generally [here](http://apanoplyofsong.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading! xoxo


End file.
